


Stories in Their Skin

by LerxstInSpace



Series: Broken Mirror-verse [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Reality Black Paladin Adam (Voltron), Character Death Fix, Established Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Naked Cuddling, POV Shiro (Voltron), Post-S7, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 17:19:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16454132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LerxstInSpace/pseuds/LerxstInSpace
Summary: They stand out like bolts of lightning against Adam’s darker skin: three long pale jagged claw marks slashed into the right side of his abdomen, just under his rib cage.Shiro can’t help it. He traces them with his fingertips, and Adam shivers.“Haggar?” Shiro asks. Adam nods and opens his mouth--probably to ask how he knows--but then his fingers find the same pattern on Shiro’s side, and he doesn’t need to ask.(Quick obligatory "comparing scars" fic)





	Stories in Their Skin

Shiro starts noticing the scars the first time they shower together.

 At this point in their newly rekindled relationship showering is all they’re doing, they’re taking it slow with the physical stuff for now. But even if they weren’t, it’s been a hectic week on the _Atlas_ and time is tight and their cabins share a bathroom between them and the only way to make sure both he _and_ Adam are able to grab a desperately-needed shower is for them to do it at the same time. It feels like it _should_ be awkward but it really isn’t--up until the Kerberos mission they’d seen each other naked on an almost daily basis since they were cadets, what was one rushed joint shower in a combat zone now?

 But at some point Adam turns away to grab the shampoo or something, and Shiro sees them. They stand out like bolts of lightning against Adam’s darker skin: three long pale jagged claw marks slashed into the right side of his abdomen, just under his rib cage.

 Shiro can’t help it. He traces them with his fingertips, and Adam shivers.

 “Haggar?” Shiro asks. Adam nods and opens his mouth--probably to ask how he knows--but then his fingers find the same pattern on Shiro’s side, and he doesn’t need to ask.

 Some weeks later, after that whole “taking it slow with the physical stuff” thing goes out the window, they end up with one of those rare days when they’re _both_ off duty. That morning, they find themselves still naked and stretched out in Shiro’s bed long after the sweat has dried, legs still tangled together in a loose braid, reading the stories in their skin with light touches and whispered questions and answers.

 Some of their scars are different.

 Adam’s fingers find the edge of the handprint burned into Shiro’s thigh and pull back quickly out of instinct, like he’s afraid it still hurts. Shiro assures him that it doesn’t, and he brushes his fingertips over it again. It looks like it must have been excruciating. It must have been self-inflicted; it’s the right size and the right angle and the thick jagged valley in the middle of it suggests there had been a good reason for it. Shiro doesn’t remember it. Some of his clone’s memories remained, but not this one. He doesn’t remember how he lost his Galra arm, either. He _knows_ how, Keith told him about it, but that memory didn’t carry over and that’s probably for the best.

 Shiro hisses in a breath when he notices the ragged-edged roundish patch on Adam’s calf--and then another, on the back of his shoulder. Then a third, just above and to the right of the base of his spine. All of them are ringed with a series of smaller punctures--a multitude of very small, very sharp teeth marks. Shiro gets a mental image of something like a lamprey, but decides to keep it to himself. Adam remembers when and where it would have happened, and he has a good idea _how,_ but the specifics are fuzzy. That, too, is probably for the best.

 Some of their scars are the same.

 The most obvious scar they have in common is not quite identical, but it’s close enough. Shiro’s goes straight across the bridge of his nose. Adam’s starts just above his left eyebrow and angles down, trailing off down his right cheek.

 There’s the same thin, clean slash across both of their left collarbones, and across the top of their right thighs, and in a few other places--a gladiator with an unusually sharp blade. Another, thicker and a little more jagged around the edges, on their left hips--that one had been armed with a crude, heavy axe.

 They take turns tracing the nearly identical webs of energy whip scars that crisscross both of their backs with their fingertips.

 And then there’s the arm. This one is an exact mirror image--Shiro’s right, Adam’s left.

 Adam got to keep his Galra arm once Pidge and Allura had done a thorough Altean-tech refurb on it, and so he also got to keep a little more of his shoulder. But the pattern of scar tissue where Adam’s flesh meets metal is pretty much the same as Shiro's own.

 It’s interesting, though--Pidge and Allura had managed to polish most of the battle damage out,  but if the light catches them just right, Shiro can see the ghosts of a few deep gouges left behind. It’s the same pattern he has on his flesh-and-blood left forearm.

 “Sendak?” Adam whispers, and Shiro nods.

 They have some invisible scars in common, too. Both of them have a deep-rooted phobia of being sedated. Both of them are uncomfortable in wide-open dark empty spaces, constantly scanning their surroundings for cover, for weapons, for sounds of movement outside their range of vision.

 Shiro never really stops thinking about the way Adam died in this reality, and he guesses Adam never really stops thinking about the way _he_ died in the other one.

 Adam’s fingers skim over his collarbone and that thin slash there one more time, and then his hand slides around to flatten between Shiro’s shoulder blades. Shiro slides his hand over the claw marks on Adam’s side, around to the small of Adam’s back, and pulls him close.

 They stay there like that well into the afternoon, legs still loosely twined together, hands splayed out across each others’ backs, skin pressed tight against as much scarred but familiar and warm and _alive_ skin as they can manage.


End file.
